Irando Alves Martins Neto

I grew up in a very small town in Brazil where, at the age of 12, I divided my time between attending school and working as a grocery store clerk. The salary I got was enough to invest in learning a second language in a country where, back then, no more than 1% of its population was fluent in English. When I was about 15, word started to spread, and gradually more friends, friends of friends, neighbors etc. reached out to me for help with English. That was how I gained my first experience with teaching: helping classmates with their homework, preparing students my age for their college entrance exams, providing one-to-one grammar lessons to adults. Later on, I earned a Teaching Degree in Languages (Portuguese and English), followed by a Master’s Degree in Education and a PhD in Language Studies. Currently, I teach Portuguese and English at a secondary technical school. At university level, I teach future language teachers how to apply linguistic concepts to education.